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Cops Ticketing Drivers Who Honk in Support of 'Occupy Seattle' Protesters
The Seattle Police Department has begun handing out tickets to motorists—including cab drivers—who honk if they love their local Occupy Wall Street contingent. People can probably still honk if they love Jesus, though don't quote us on that.
Apparently lots of Seattleites were honking in support of the protesters, currently camped out at Westlake Park (in case you want to visit them after church today). One ticketed honker is cab driver Ayad Agila, who told KOMO News he was "shocked" that he had to pay either $124 or $144 just for making his car go beep-beep. Agila told KIRO he won't pay the fine, and now he's probably on some sort of government watch list. Meantime, protesters have been trying to help their supporters by holding signs warning them not to honk.
Car horns are annoying. It's a well-known fact. Seriously! But how can the cops tell if drivers are honking for the protesters, or honking for purely driving-related reasons? Also, shouldn't they ticket people who let their car alarms go off, because that's even worse than incessant honking? I'm only suggesting these ideas in order to make a more fair and equitable society in Seattle, and also to help the SPD maximize its earning potential.
It's another Battle of Seattle!
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40 Comments so far
Show AllThe pigs, that are owned by the ruling elite, are scared shitless of what is happening across the nation. Change is in the autumn wind and it will be a cold winter for the criminal bankers and their lickspittles.
Change is in the wind...blow them horns allover the city til the cops give up...betteryet, do it remote with loud speakers...
There should be a new paradigm to the Occupy movement in regard to tickets, arrests fines etc.
Every American charged while standing up to fix our democracy should NOT PAY, should not accept these false charges, and should not accept the intimidation of a state which is suppressing the spirit of DEMOCRACY.
Apparently the forces that be HATE DEMOCRACY, and so we should do our DUTY as Jefferson pointed out, WHICH IS TO DISOBEY THESE UNJUST 'LAWS' which only trample on our constitutional RIGHT to SPEAK OUT. Everyone arrested or ticketed needs to join a class action lawsuit to throw all these arrests and tickets into THE TRASH where they belong!
Progressive and leftwing lawyers, get out there and volunteer your services — You could be immensely beneficial!
Privatization is THEFT!
Deregulation is CORRUPTION!
Corporate Personhood is A WEAPON AGAINST WE THE PEOPLE!
" Apparently the forces that be HATE DEMOCRACY..."
Ya think?
It just finally dawned on me ; )
Anyway, I'm getting more and more angry at this crap. That whole Brooklyn Bridge fiasco was a trap and a set-up. Excuse the redundency, but this has to be called out over and over as the fascist role-playing that it is.
Cheers Rev. B
They don't hate democracy as much as think it's irrelevant. That's even scarier to me. You have to know a little about democracy to hate it. Democracy doesn't even register on their radar.
Just wanted to add something here Salusa. I was in D.C. on Oct5/6th for October2011.org and was walking on "Federal Triangle" and admiring the Dept. of Justice Building (Formerly the FBI Building). Along the walls about 1 story up are inscrible quotes of History in Regards to the Laws. One I photographed was "When the Law Ends, Tyranny Begins". I think that is a quote worth standing behind.
What is the measure of an unjust law? It's heuristic. A struggle occurs over the line, but I think the line must be based on harm. No harm no foul. No victimless crimes.
But victims? Yes, they must be given justice, as much as society is able to accommodate that. But are annoyances enough of a price to pay for democracy? I think so... Annoyance in a neighborhood sleeping at night is not the same as making a loud noise in midday, in support of a legal procession.
Believe me, I'm 100% behind rule-of-law, when that law is just.
I'm not the one making demands, the 99% is. But one of my top demands would be that the pirates robbing our national treasures with privatization, the thieves corrupting our political process with their money and deregulation, and the corporations externalizing their 'risks' onto We The People,
ALL SIMPLY BE HELD TO THE RULE OF JUST LAW.
Top Priority.
Cheers and thanks for your comment gnken1
This is actually a good thing. Every driver who gets a ticket is probably going to attend the protest because of it, as well as bitch long and loud to anybody who will listen. Having their heads cracked open would accomplish the same thing, but this way the cops do our recruiting for us without anybody getting hurt.
The goal of the Occupy protests is for the Wall Street criminals and their government collaborators to be deposed, arrested and imprisoned and their ill gotten gains confiscated and returned to pension funds and people who have been made homeless by their crimes returned to homes.
I would recommend that anyone stopped for honking tell the police that they were honking for Jesus.
Isn’t honking in support of something freedom of speech? So the issue is the loudness? I contend that the clamor from the free speech money rolling thru the halls of a public space, the capitol, is so loud that our reps can’t hear us or anything else over the din. Example:
Which speech is more likely to speak louder and get the desired result of the speaker?
1.) a $1000 dollar bill
2.) a honk
`-`-`-`The law should monitor the noise level in the halls of congress instead. The lobbyists are disturbing the peace big-time in there.
Can a car be a corporation, and thus a person?
Honking your horn is nothing more than speech. You are COMMUNICATING with your fellow citizens. No law, at least in MY state of Colorado, gives ANY cop the authority to tell you or anyone else what they can say to anyone, under any circumstances, using what means, or where or when you can say them. ANY attempt to silence you in such situations is an infringement of your first amendment rights to COMMUNICATE with your fellow citizens. This deserves a SERIOUS lawsuit. I hope they take the cops and the city for MILLIONS.
Capitalism at its best. A poster at The Telegraph aptly commented "wonder if the cops realize that their pension plans are invested by Goldman Sachs" - well, that just about sums it up!
Tom, I love your name." Sure I'll tell you, homicide."
Mr policeman do you think you are immune to the things that are at the heart of these protests? You had better wake up and smell the coffee, and I don't mean that rank crap you make down at the station. If you loose the support of the general population, you had better armor-up those crown-vics, and get used to wearing that full body armor 24-7. Wake up, your next, your choosing the wrong side! Protect and Serve. What and who?
iwonder,
I agree with your sentiments, but if your spelling gets too LOOSE. we tend to get distracted and LOSE your train of thought. Peace.
Hi Zephyrbag, I'm so sorry my spelling error upset you. I try my best when I post on CD, because I know the readers here are really smart, and like big words that are properly spelled. My only excuse is that I am a victim of our public school system here in Texas. In closing remember the words of our great late governor Ma Ferguson, "If English was good enough for the sweet baby Jesus it's good enough for anyone".
iwonder, good for you. I am much more interested in what people have to say than how they spell/punctuate it. xxxx
By the way, you have an excellent excuse. Why, even here in Eugene OR, my son had an 8th grade English teacher who had the word "CHEIF" in 4" high letters on the classroom wall. And his math teacher was not a math major (none of the 8th grade math teachers were) and could not explain or understand the math book from Chicago Publishing. In fact, none of them could. Lucky for him his father tutored him. Other kids weren't so lucky. Budget cuts, and that was 17 years ago. xxxx
It's much worse now. Now we have teachers cheating on tests and encouraging kids to drop out to avoid dragging down the average. I would say Obama and Arne Duncan want to destroy public education and replace it with corporate education. Above all, don't teach kids to think. xxxx
I see that writing the webmaster and calling CD still isn't getting paragraph breaks in the posts.
The cops may or may not personally want to give tickets for honking, but obviously an order was given. Yes, the powers that be are scared. And yes, they may shut up the motorists, but everything they do increases public resistance to corporate rule.
The 99% will win!
Strange ..... Can't remember tickets for honking relating to, say, sporting events. It could be the "distraction" factor that sport addiction provides ..... Ever wonder why motorcycles do not need effective mufflers and can make a real, real racket? Might be that the motorcycle symbolizes the horse, and, you know, the cowboy thing ... John Wayne ... "good guy, bad, guy" ... aha
Cops in this country are about to find out real hard and real fast that 30 years of locking up pot smokers, people who blow .09 on a .08 limit B.A.C, non-violent folks driving with expired this and that, non-violent folks caught driving in parts of the city they don't live, non-violent folks who "look funny", non-violent muslims, protestors, poor people, homeless and desperate people, HAS NOT MADE YOU VERY POPULAR AND THERE ARE MANY, MANY PEOPLE WHO WILL NOT CRY IF YOUR FUNDING IS CUT AND YOU HAVE TO LOOK FOR NEW "CAREERS". We didn't cry for the whale harpooners, we don't cry for the seal clubbers, we don't weep for the lack of lumberjacks in our rain-forests, and we will not shed one damn tear for you and your mace, your billy club and your solitary confinement B.S. YOUR JOB IS NOT WORTH OUR LIBERTY!!!
I understand and agree with what you said. I am just curious about a minor point which I did not understand, so I will ask a dumb question:- "folks caught driving in parts of the city they don't live" ? Is there such a law?
No, but cops can always trump up some charge, arrest you, haul you in for booking, charge you with the trumped up charge and throw you in jail overnight. You can then easily beat their charges in court as long as you have $5000 for an attorney who plays golf with the judge on Wednesday afternoons. Loitering. Disturbing the peace. Vagrancy. Drunk and disorderly. Breaking curfew. There are lots of charges that can be used to keep "undesirables" out of a well off neighborhood.
My wife has a good idea. With all of the Facebook and Twitterers on line, why not start a national honk in? Everybody driving honk your horn at, say, 2:00 PM every day, or perhaps an hourly honk-in, nation or world wide.
Honk for Peace, honk for jobs, honk for justice against Wall Street, the Congress, the MICC and the Obomber in Charge! As the revivalists used to say, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord!"
Let the whole 1% know that the 99% is "mad as Hell and we're not going to take it anymore!"
My wife says to include, "If you can read this, thank a teacher!"
And I have to particularly acknowledge YOUR comment- WAY COOL!!!
Very amusing piece. However, I'm not inclined to laugh. When our masters get REALLY scared, it won't be police handing out tickets. If this keeps on going on, there WILL be bodies in the street!
That wasn't meant to be amusing. It could be done and would definitely be a "wake up call."
We can tiptoe around, accomplish little, feel good, and that's it. Our Fascist Ubermench can watch our efforts and clink their champagne glasses, but if we are afraid of a true fascist backlash, we are already defeated.
If every time they open a window, or walk to their limo, they hear cars honking their horns. If all they hear in their gated retreats is the distant honking of horns, perhaps they will surrender, or perhaps they will react with still more brutality, but they will no longer be able to sit in their ivory towers counting their billions and trillions and pretend we don't exist.
Can the melodrama, there won't be any dead bodies in the street because of OWS.
Anyway, the dead bodies are already here. One million dead muslims and counting.
Since WW II, the US has mostly exported the casualties of its capitalist system, but business at home is booming lately among the homeless, the uninsured and in the prisons,
But they won't need to kill any one to disperse OWS.
That will mostly be a political and "legal" process.
>>Anyway, the dead bodies are already here. One million dead muslims and counting. Since WW II, the US has mostly exported the casualties of its capitalist system,<<
Industrial warfare. It is the main export of the U.S.
If the oligarchy gets scared, there WILL be American bodies in the street. It happened at Kent State, to name one instance. The political and legal process might not be enough to intimidate this time. I'm not trying to be melodramatic. These people are bottom line thinkers, and their bottom line is mo money, mo power. Nothing will stand in their way. What I'm suggesting is that it is time to wipe the shit off our body politic before our Republic goes totally Bananas. I'd rather see THIER bodies in the street. It seems to me that things are getting just as desperate as they were during the Viet carnage, except that this time it is happening to us, not just to South-east Asians or Muslims (or Latin Americans).
Does anyone know how much the ticket was that the cab driver got for honking to support the #OWS protesters? I would hope he would not pay it and fight it in a court of law. It would make for great publicity for the #OWS movement!
According to the article the cabby said it was either $124 or $144.
The fine is 124.00 and has been in effect at least since 2007. This isn't something new for Washington State. New York State has a similar law.
"Earlier this summer, a Seattle police officer decided that Mark Cruz of Renton was honking out of turn. Cruz was waiting to turn onto First Avenue from Columbia Street in downtown Seattle when he realized that the driver in front of him was oblivious to a newly green light.
"He was yakking on his phone, if I recall correctly," Cruz said.
So he honked. The car in front of him lurched into motion. Cruz completed his turn and started to turn into a parking garage.
Then he saw the motorcycle officer pulling up behind him.
"He actually came around next to my window and he said to me, 'You were honking at the car that was in front of you,' " Cruz said. "I kept waiting for him to get to the real reason he pulled me over."
The officer let him off with a warning, but "I was dumbfounded," Cruz said.
"Your horn is for warning, not for talking," said Kris Jensen, a Seattle-based lawyer familiar with fighting traffic infractions. "It's OK to use your horn at the point you're getting cut off. But if you go up behind them and start honking, well, that's not OK." "
Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Hold-that-honk-Car-horns-are-for-safety-only-1247702.php#ixzz1aNmHQTE9
I find it amazing that such small areas of our lives can be legislated, but we should never consider legislating or regulating the excesses of the financial system.
re: "I find it amazing that such small areas of our lives can be legislated, "
These are the types of intrusive and unnecessary laws and restrictions that give liberals and the left a bad reputation among the Tea Party types, and migh be the ONE area where I agree with them to a degree...
Laws should be designed to curb an abuse, and I agree that the police should have the tools needed to ticket a motorist *abusing* the use of their horn, but if this (honking as a mark of political solidarity, in midday, in an urban area) holds up in a fair court of law, I consider *that as an abuse* of the law itself.
As I mentioned above the law is not an absolute... it is a 'guide' for law-enforcers, and justices. Let's hope the final decision on this matter upholds the spirit of Democracy, not petty punitive action designed to keep us safe and comfortably distant from the messy edges of that democracy.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention gardenernorcal.
Cheers and Long Live OWS!!
Next up in tonight's news, geese charged with honking.
As one patriotic witness stated:
"Heck, there they were, bunch of protesting geese flying in a communist collective group and they actually were honking!"
"So sir, you were offended?"
"I sure was! So I blasts away at them with my shotgun and one of them had the damn cheek to poop right in my eye!"
"Your one remaining right-eye?"
"That's the one! Now I'm blinded! I'm sure it was a left-winger that got me!"
The only good cop-------not policeman------- I can think of is a dead one ,preferably from a bullet shot right in the face followed by another in the belly.
I have honked more in the past few months than I have in my entire previous 47 years, and I can tell you precisely why, and it has nothing to do with protests...
it is because the MORON in front of me is sitting at a green light, texting...
or sitting at a red, and not taking the free right they're going to, anyway, even though countless opportunities have come and gone, making me miss them, too, and be delayed by their idiocy, because they are texting...
or weaving into my lane because they are talking on the phone, and gesturing...
or continually looking down into the PASSENGER SEAT, or THEIR LAP, where they try to HIDE the fact they are NOT PAYING ATTENTION to their driving but in a secondary, or tertiary, way, because THEY ARE REALLY TEXTING...
it doesn't matter if you're a foxy female brain surgeon, or a young buck slinging burgers...
if you are too stupid to DRIVE because you cannot disconnect your BRAIN from your fucking HANDHELD, then you are a MORON!!!
and if anyone gets in my face because I just honked at an idiot who stopped right in the middle of a thoroughfare FOR NO REASON but to text...
just stopped...in the middle of the fucking road...to text...
well, they better be ready for a tirade...
hey, COPS!
it is ILLEGAL to use a HANDHELD while DRIVING!
BUST THEM, not the goddamn honker...
what the hell is going on around here? where's the real danger?